


Under My Skin (Deep in the Heart of Me)

by waketosleep



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Backstory, F/M, M/M, Massage, Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-11
Updated: 2011-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-19 07:19:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/198336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waketosleep/pseuds/waketosleep
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's tattoos tell more of a story than he'll ever admit to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Under My Skin (Deep in the Heart of Me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [random00b](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=random00b).



> For random00b for her donation to help Brazil after the flooding at the beginning of this year. Thanks for both your generosity and your patience! She was delightfully easy with what she wanted, so she got something about Steve and his tattoos, with bonus Danny.

Danny runs his hands down the planes of Steve's back, watching the muscles shift under his skin. Danny moves his hands back up to Steve's shoulder blades and pushes the heels of his palms in, feeling knots as Steve sighs into the pillow.

"I guess being insane is more stressful than you let on," Danny mutters, pressing his thumbs into the muscles along Steve's shoulders. Steve shakes under Danny's thighs as he laughs.

"Maybe I should yell more." Steve's voice is muffled and soft.

"Maybe you should," Danny grins, and presses a kiss against the tattoo on Steve's right shoulder.

***

"What the fuck is _that_?" asked Steve, twenty-five and on leave from training in Germany.

"Illuminatus," said the girl on his left, also a tourist and maybe also military, from the look of her. "The first one, I think." She squinted at the plaque beside the image. "Yep. Illuminatus I. Illuminatus II is on the other side of the room." She gestured vaguely.

"This is an interesting museum," said Steve.

"Not what you expected?"

"I just got tired of the castle and came and walked in. I kind of thought they meant the Geiger who has counters."

She laughed. "His name is actually Giger." She pronounced it with an 'ee' sound. "My name is Catherine," she said, putting out her right hand.

Steve shook it. "Steve."

"What branch?" she asked, and wow, not to be underestimated.

"Navy," Steve stuttered out.

"Good boy, sailor." She hooked her arm through his. "The next room has all his movie stuff. You know he designed the Alien?"

"You mean _the_ Alien?"

"Yep. Ripley was my hero, growing up."

"Mine too," said Steve, half-meaning it. Catherine laughed at him, a throaty laugh that went straight to his dick.

He cast one last look back at Illuminatus I as they moved through the HR Giger Museum. Something about that female face really pulled at him.

***

Steve is pliant underneath Danny now, doing his best to melt right into the bed as Danny pushes and works at the muscles in his back. Danny's fingers skate over the scar from an old gunshot wound near his left shoulder, pressing in hard around it and forcing a moan from Steve. "Where did you get this one, anyway?" he asks, his eyes tracing over the visible snake coiling up the curve of Steve's shoulder, the pink points of lotus petals on his arm.

"Wha?" Steve asks muzzily, lifting his head a little. He might have been going to sleep, Danny realizes. Jerk.

"The other shoulder tattoo, over here." He touches it, cups his hand around it to press his thumb into the join of Steve's shoulder and arm.

"Oh," says Steve after a second. "Japan. Both of 'em. Same time."

They look about the same age and the same colour, it's true. "Must have taken a while."

"Leave from Korea," mumbles Steve. He groans. "Do that again."

Danny obliges, and Steve turns to jelly under him. Danny smiles.

***

The receptionist, a kid with facial piercings, looked up at the jingle of the shop door.

"Irrashaimase," he said, his tone flat and automatic.

Steve nodded. "Do you have room today?" he asked in half-assed Japanese.

The kid consulted the appointment book. "Some. Do you know what you want?"

Steve held up a piece of graph paper with a sketch on it.

"Half an hour," said the kid and got up, probably to go talk to the artist. "Please sit," he said, gesturing at the couch out front.

When he got into the studio proper, the artist--Hiro--blinked at him and then smiled.

"Back for more?" he asked in English.

"I like the first one," said Steve. "And I'm still here."

Hiro laughed. "It's healing okay?"

"So far," said Steve. He patted it and winced a little. "Itchy," he amended.

"What do you want today?"

Steve handed over his drawing and Hiro studied it. "Kind of Buddhist."

Steve shrugged. "I'm going on two years in Asia. And I'm from Hawaii."

"I like it," said Hiro. "Maybe a few changes?"

"I trust you," said Steve, sitting in the chair and letting Hiro prepare and sanitize things.

The first touch of the needle was sharp bliss. The next couple of hours were a fix he wanted more of, and soon.

But he couldn't wait to get back to port and show Catherine his new ink.

***

"You're a Navy stereotype," says Danny, massaging his way down over the shoulder blades to the back of Steve's ribcage. Steve twists happily underneath him as Danny moves down the bed.

"At least you finally admit you know I'm in the Navy," says Steve.

***

It was a drinking kind of night. He'd come off two shitty missions in the sandbox and was in Greece, trying to unwind a little. He'd told Catherine via email that maybe he was thinking of quitting the service, going back to school. Maybe cop school. She hadn't responded yet. He wasn't going to email his dad, though. Not for a while. He was just thinking about it.

The woman at the bar was tall, dark, and checking him out; Steve strolled over and ordered a beer as he leaned in next to her. She looked him up and down and sipped her red wine.

"Hey," he said.

"Hello." Her accent was thick and he couldn't help finding it cute.

"Are you here alone?"

She smiled widely. "Nope," she said, and winked before getting up and leaving.

He stared after her with his beer forgotten in his hand, trying to process what had just happened.

"Syngnomi," muttered a guy brushing past him to the bar.

Steve stepped out of the way automatically. "Whoops."

That made the guy do a double-take as the bartender got his drink. "American?" he asked.

"Maybe," Steve hedged.

The guy burst out laughing. "Sit," he said, waving at a stool. "I like Americans."

His name was Kostas, and they sat at the bar and talked while Steve finished his beer. When he went to signal for another one, Kostas leaned over the bar and declared they were going to drink ouzo. The bartender just brought over the bottle and two glasses, and after three of those in quick succession, he started to feel it.

"You have a lot of tattoos," he told Kostas, staring at one poking out of his shirt sleeve.

Kostas obligingly pulled his sleeve up, revealing a black-and-white tattoo of a snake crawling out of a skull. Several more images spread down his arms and presumably elsewhere, too. Steve blinked.

"I'm a tattoo artist," said Kostas. "Let's see yours." He pointed at the tail of a snake that was never quite covered by Steve's t-shirts. Steve grinned and hauled up his sleeve in return, then the other side to show off his Giger tattoo.

"They're both about three years old," he said. "Got them in Japan."

"That is nice work. You have good skin for tattooing."

Steve's neck went hot. "Thanks?"

"Come with me," said Kostas suddenly, standing up and slapping him on the back heartily.

Kostas was a big damn guy and he'd bought the ouzo, so Steve followed.

"My shop is on this road," he said, leading the way up the street outside the bar. The air was balmy and light and people wandered around, ducking into and out of restaurants and bars. Kostas' shop was tiny, next to a coffee bar on a corner, and when he flicked on the lights inside it was clean and quiet.

"What are we looking at?" asked Steve, interested but unsure what the hell was going on.

"I have done some Giger work you might like; I'll show you my portfolio."

He dragged out a binder of photos and two bottles of water, and they sat and drank while Steve paged through it. "Nice stuff," he said.

"Thanks. I do lots of different things but I like the artistic, what is the word...." He trailed off. "Freehand. Freehand things."

Steve nodded, flipping a page in the binder to see a photo of a chest piece on a man, still fresh on reddened skin; it was an abstract thing, all in black, with spikes and tribal flourishes.

"You like that one?" asked Kostas, and Steve suddenly noticed the heat of Kostas' thigh pressed all along his own.

He cleared his throat. "It's nice."

"I liked doing it. Don't get many of those." Kostas paused. "You want one?"

Steve's skin immediately hummed, with... with the thought of getting another tattoo. It itched. He wanted to say yes. "I can't," he said. "I can't get chest tattoos. Military. They show really easily." He kind of hated to say it, remembered why he'd come to a coastal town to find a bar tonight in the first place.

Kostas hummed thoughtfully, too close. "How about your back?"

Steve blinked.

He still might catch hell for it, but... fuck it. The hell with the Navy, he'd given a lot and only gotten years scared off his life in combat, sand in his orifices, an uncertain future. He might go civilian anyway. He could get as much ink as he wanted, then.

"Yeah, okay," he said. Kostas' leg pressed harder against his for a second before he got up, and then Steve heard the autoclave starting.

"Take your shirt off," said Kostas, looking at Steve over his shoulder as he put on blue gloves.

Steve shivered and got up, abandoning the binder and walking further into the studio as he lifted the hem of his shirt.

***

Steve gets restless as Danny's hands work their way down, from his ribs to his lower back; he's really sensitive down there, twitchy and almost ticklish, which has always made Danny wonder why he's tattooed in that spot of all places. His fingers hesitate at the edges of Steve's lower back tattoo--his tramp stamp, as Danny usually likes to call it within earshot of other people, even though Steve's so shameless he doesn't seem bothered.

"Can I go over your stamp?" Danny asks. "It's not still sore, is it?"

Steve, his chin resting on his crossed arms, looks over his shoulder at Danny. "No, it's fine," he says, still slurring his words almost drunkenly. He looks like a cat sleeping in the sun. "It's all healed."

Danny obliges, digging his vaguely sore thumbs into Steve's lower back muscles, right over his ass, and doesn't miss how Steve arches off the bed very slightly at the contact. Danny smirks to himself and keeps it up, watching the patterns on Steve's skin shift out of place and back again as he pushes into the muscles. Steve's new tattoo is a Hawaiian tribal design; he sat through three sessions to finish it and it flares all the way to his hips and down onto his ass, totally covering up the old barbed-wire design except in tiny places where a knowing eye can catch glimpses.

"Why'd you get the cover-up done?" he asks.

"You don't like it?"

"It's fine," says Danny noncommittally. He's never really had a strong opinion on Steve's tattoos either way, outside the teasing, although he does kind of like being the only person (besides the tattoo artist) who's seen all of this one.

"The old one wasn't really me anymore," says Steve through a yawn. "So I changed it."

Danny massages a place right above Steve's ass that makes his back arch again, and Danny leans forward to press a kiss between his shoulder blades. "First time you've marked yourself with Hawaii," he says.

"Yeah," says Steve, and shifts around under Danny until he's lying on his back, reaching up to yank Danny down for a real kiss, a thank-you kiss with lots of tongue (just how Danny likes them).

"When are we getting you marked up?" asks Steve when they break apart, running a hand over the curve of Danny's ass and squeezing a cheek through his pants, which he probably won't be wearing much longer.

Danny rolls his eyes. "I'm booked for the tenth of never. You just want your name on my ass, don't you?"

"What's so bad about that?"

"I'll get you a Sharpie if it'll make you happy," says Danny, and Steve rolls him over to kiss him again as Danny reaches for the fastening on his pants. Maybe he needs another glimpse of that tribal tattoo, right now.

 

THE END

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Deep in the Heart of Me (So That You’re Really a Part of Me Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/380051) by [norgbelulah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/norgbelulah/pseuds/norgbelulah)




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